In so far
as he was interested in the curriculum, he probably desired that it
should be such as would satisfy some want which he himself felt, or
thought he felt, in early life, or should diffuse some social or
religious or political crotchet on which his fancy had secretly fed
during his years of active exertion, and on the success of which he
came to think, in the latter part of his life, that the best
interests of the community were dependent. The number of these
honorably ambitious but ill-informed and somewhat eccentric
testators increases every year, as the country grows in wealth and
the habit of giving to public objects gains in strength.
The consequence is that we are threatened with the spectacle during
the coming century of a great waste of money by well-meaning persons
in the establishment all over the country of institutions calling
themselves "universities," which are either so feebly equipped as
rather to hinder than help the cause of education, or so completely
committed by their organization to the propagation of certain social
or religious theories as to deserve the appellation of mission
stations rather than of colleges.
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